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PrideFest warmly welcomes "an icon'' of gays and lesbians.
By BABITA PERSAUD
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 7, 2001
TAMPA -- She embraces gays and lesbians, and they embrace her back.
Tammy Faye Bakker Messner was among fans Friday night at the reception to kick off PrideFest, the Tampa Bay area's annual gay and lesbian celebration.
"She's an icon," said Melanie Fidler, in the circle around Messner.
Messner signed autographs with a Tiffany pen and held a Louis Vuitton purse. At just 4 feet 11, she wore black fringe capri pants and a beaded choker.
"But she's bigger than life," said Doug Bennett, 27.
Messner's message Friday night to 200 people at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center was "God Loves Everyone."
She said she refuses to label people. "You know God doesn't categorize people," she said. "He doesn't categorize black and white or Presbyterian or Catholic or gay or straight. I don't put people in categories, either."
Before the PTL scandal, Messner hugged a man dying of AIDS on air and said, "These are God's people, too."
She teamed with gay comedian Jm J. Bullock (of Too Close for Comfort fame) in 1996 for a talk show.
Her documentary, Through the Eyes of Tammy Faye, screened last year at the Sundance Film Festival, is narrated by RuPaul Charles, the drag queen, and produced and directed by a gay couple, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato.
Christian conservatives criticized her embracing of gays. Pastors wouldn't allow her in their churches. Christian bookstores wouldn't take her book Telling It My Way.
And, according to Bud Bromwell, at the reception Friday night, "That isn't true Christianity."
Messner is a Minnesota country girl who grew up poor -- "in a shack," according to her Web site.
She turned to God at age 10, makeup at 16, and married Jim Bakker on April Fool's Day. The two started in Christian television with a sock puppet kids show, featuring parables about Jesus.
She has endured a pain killer addiction and colon cancer.
And she has married two men who both wound up in jail.
Bakker, convicted in 1989 for his part in the PTL scandal, was released in 1999. Now 61, he lives in Sunny Hills in the Florida Panhandle with his second wife, Lori Graham Bakker.
Tammy Faye's second husband, Roe Messner, a former PTL executive, spent two years in jail on bankruptcy fraud charges.
Now he accompanies her to functions, including Friday night's reception.
"I always go with Tammy," he said.
The couple live in Charlotte, N.C. She still sings and still is an ordained minister.
This is Messner's first PrideFest.
She says many Christian ministers don't support gays because "they are afraid."
"I think it's very commendable," said Addison Scott, 39. "Sometimes it takes going through a scandal to make people not judgmental."